


all this history is just a mystery to me

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Bourne (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-09
Updated: 2007-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      Thanks to: Ruth, Coldest Poet & Havoc<p>Written for sophiaiswisdom</p>
    </blockquote>





	all this history is just a mystery to me

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to: Ruth, Coldest Poet  & Havoc
> 
> Written for sophiaiswisdom

 

 

 _You could have a new name,_ David Webb tells himself after he pulls his body, shaking, out of the East River.

Nobody said anything about quicksand, but that's how he feels about the sidewalks of New York as he walks down them; dripping at first, then just wet, then damp, and finally - by the time he reaches Grand Central - cold but dry. So tired that every step threatens to do him in, like if he could only stop and lean against whatever wall was beside him for a few moments, he'd stop sinking. But he shakes it off as he slides a few found coins into the pay phone and dials a number he's only recently remembered. "Dereon," he says to the man who answers. "I need new paperwork. By Thursday."

"You got it. What name should I put it under?"

"Webb," David says. _You don't need a new name,_ he instructs himself, as Bourne struggles in the back of his mind. _You just have to remember who you were. Before._

*

He starts by finding Nicky.

He does it the old-fashioned way: a personal ad. David knows that she, like every Agency worker before her, was trained to skim the newspaper for codes and messages. So he opts for the simplest message he can think of. _We met in Paris, but it was like we'd known each other a lifetime before that._ It would make no sense to any other operative, and the average person would likely cringe at the saccharine tone. It costs him, but by Friday the prepaid cell phone he'd gotten just for this is ringing.

"Why are you looking for me?" she asks. "I thought we agreed." There's a long pause, and then, "It hasn't gotten any easier."

"I know," he answers. "Where are you?"

Nicky hesitates. "Chicago," she says finally.

"Wait for me at the airport. I'll be on the next flight to O'Hare."

He has little, and needs less. Without the hassle of baggage, getting through domestic security is easy enough, but David is reluctant to call anything easy anymore. Just because no one is looking for him at this particular moment doesn't mean there won't be someone, someday.

*

Chicago:

"Nicky-"

"What do you want, David?"

She calls him David without him having told her anything other than that he's no longer Bourne. "You're really going to have to tell me everything one of these days," he says.

Nicky looks at him out of the corner of her eye. "I thought you said you remembered."

*

Her apartment is tiny and sparse, and David stands just inside the doorway until she turns around and raises an eyebrow. "Are you coming inside?" she asks, setting her bag down on the table and taking off her coat.

He nods and quickly checks to make sure the door is locked. _Don't go near the windows,_ Bourne screams in his head. "I'm trying to find my past," he tells Nicky, still standing in the shadow of the hallway. "I can't go another day not knowing, not anymore. I'm no longer Jason Bourne."

"I know," she says quietly, and he believes that she does.

*

The old Bourne surfaces in his dreams, as he always does, and David wakes up on Nicky's pull-out loveseat to a headache and sweat-soaked sheets. Fifteen minutes in a cold shower before he feels the way he wants to again: too numb to remember what he'd dreamed. It's always killing, black-and-white flashes of a disconnected life. A life he's trying to let die in his subconscious, but Bourne's too smart for that, too resourceful. Too heavy to go quietly.

*

She's in the kitchen with coffee and silence when he emerges from the bathroom. "Sorry I woke you," he says, and she pushes a bottle of aspirin across the table towards him. He shakes out a few into his palm and washes them down with a swallow of the coffee. She'd added cream without him having to ask.

"I'm going back to bed," she says, standing and drawing her robe tighter around her. He gets the impression that he's seen what's underneath, a long time ago, but when he opens his mouth to ask her again who David Webb was before Bourne, she's closing the door of her room and turning the lock.

*

"You were a Captain in the Army when Treadstone recruited you," Nicky says, as they sit across from each other in the diner outside Nixa. "I know you know that already, but your Army career was pretty unremarkable, at least on all the official papers. You served in Desert Storm." She stops and stirs some cream into her coffee, the spoon clinking against the enamel mug.

"Go on."

"You served in Desert Storm," she says again. "With my father. You were the last person to see him alive, David. You were the one who came to the house with the news. You wouldn't let it go through the normal protocol; you insisted on being the one to tell my mom and me."

He's struck by the urge to reach out and touch her, put his palm over her hand where it's laying on the table. "I remember some of it," he replies. "The helicopter. The thump of the blades." Sometimes his headache pounds in concert with them. And the bullets flying, but he's not going to tell her that. Up until now, he'd been sure it was a Treadstone mission gone wrong, not something from so long ago. "So when I showed up as a Treadstone agent..."

"It had been years, but I still knew who you were." She sets the spoon down.

"When I came to your house," he says slowly, because he's still putting this sentence together in his head, "I think you were wearing a blue sweater. Your mom, she knew why I was there before I even made it onto your porch, but she still held open the door and offered me coffee just the same."

Nicky nods quickly and he can see the tears in her eyes. This time he does reach out and lace their fingers together. She squeezes his hand, but lets go quickly.

*

He's working on being still. Bourne's urge to look over his shoulder constantly pulls at him. _How many exits are there?_ He can see that Nicky's the same way, checking her surroundings warily all the time. So they sit together in the Nixa library, struggling for peace, surrounded by old yearbooks and newspapers. He finds he led a unexceptionable life in his younger days: good at sports but not great, no police records they can find, one notation in the Community section of the local paper that about a ROTC scholarship. And later, two obituaries - the parents he can't remember the faces of. "I'm sorry," Nicky murmurs when she finds the pages.

"I don't remember them," he replies.

"Maybe you will some day." She leaves the table while he reads, and comes back empty-handed. "I think we've found everything there is to find here."

"There's an address," David says. "I'm going to drive past. You don't have to come with me."

Nicky shakes her head. "I'm coming."

*

"What happened between us, Nicky, when I was with the Agency?" he asks quietly, as they sit in the rental car across the street from his childhood home.

She's looking out the passenger side window in the opposite direction. "Nothing happened."

"Nicky..."

"Why don't you believe me?" she asks, turning her head towards him. David holds her gaze for a long time. He knows how to be still like this. Finally, she fidgets. "It was nothing, David; you were new and you weren't... you weren't wound so tight yet." She sounds like she's not sure she's saying it the right way. "You knew where I lived and you came to my apartment one night. I never reported it to Conklin, never told anyone. Ever." She sinks a little lower in the seat. "I think part of me hoped that you remembered me from before your training. Maybe remembered what a good man you were."

He's quiet for a while, processing this new information. "You didn't like what Treadstone did to people," he ventures after a moment.

"After about six months of working the program, no." She shakes her head.

David looks again at the house where he grew up. It's small and white, with a fence. The lawn is neat, but that could be the work of people who live there now. There's a big oak tree in the front yard. He thinks he remembers hydrangeas in the back. "I didn't do anything you didn't want me to, did I?" he murmurs, needing to know.

"God, no." It's so soft he barely hears it. He looks over at her, but she's turned away again.

*

Slowly, methodically, they track down almost all of his past. It's not as satisfying as he'd hoped it would be, few details offer any insight at all. He even meets with an Army colonel who'd been his superior once, more than ten years ago. David gives a brief explanation for why he's there - that a disastrous car accident had resulted in his amnesia and he's looking for things that might help him to remember. One lie and one truth. The Colonel barely remembers him and offers only a few recollections. David thanks him, pays for his coffee, and meets Nicky outside the restaurant.

"Is it weird that I feel restless?" he asks her.

She shrugs. "I don't think it's weird. You were always on the move when you were an agent, and after that you were always on the run." She zips her coat a little higher. "Did he have any information that helped?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all," he sighs. Bourne stretches in his head but says nothing. "I almost wish I'd found out something shocking, some big revelation. It would make me feel like all this searching has been worth something."

They walk slowly down the street. Nicky tucks her hands in her pockets. "Maybe you should try to build a life with this as your starting point," she says slowly, like she's thinking on each word before saying it. "Stop trying to go back to the beginning. Knowing it isn't the same as remembering it, David."

"Yeah, I know." He pulls his collar closer around his neck and takes her arm. She looks at him in surprise but relaxes again almost immediately. "Let's walk for a while, okay?"

"Okay."

*

He's gotten used to her presence, so the one day she's not there in the apartment when he wakes up, he finds himself disoriented. He finds a note on the kitchen table. _At work. If you're going to stay, you should think about finding something, too._

He hadn't thought about staying. He hadn't thought about the future at all, he'd been so caught up in trying to figure out the past. But he has a history degree - he has a _master's_ , apparently obtained through night school and online courses while he'd been in the Army, before Treadstone - and a military career that looks good on paper. When Nicky comes home that night, he's researching his options on the internet, using her laptop. "I don't think I can put on my resume that I was a government assassin," he says to her. She smiles and then laughs, covering her mouth as she does. "I can't remember ever seeing you smile before," he adds.

She chuckles. "I didn't mean to guilt you into finding a job right this minute," she replies, and hangs up her coat. "There's ways to say that you worked a classified position. Otherwise I never would have found anything, either. It's surprisingly easy to tell someone that you can't put down any references because they might kill you."

He can't tell if she's joking or not. "What did you tell them when you went with me to Missouri?" He pauses briefly. "Wait, first I want to know what kind of job you have, where you can use your real name and not have the Agency come looking for you."

"I made up a story about my mom being sick and in the hospital and needing to leave right away. I'm an assistant manager at a bookstore, David; they're pretty laid-back." Nicky sits down on the loveseat beside him, her legs crossed underneath her. "Besides, I used my mother's maiden name on the application. All my references were faked, and my boss never called any of them anyway."

David sets the laptop on the coffee table and leans forward, his hands clasped. "You know, I dragged you all over the world with me, but I don't really know anything about you."

"I was born, I grew up." She shrugs. "Not much to tell, really. The Agency recruited me right out of college - literally, _out_ of college. I wrote a paper that got me noticed by Abbot. I went from UCLA to Langley to Paris before I even truly understood what was happening. So now I work, and think about finishing my degree. Maybe now that you've taken down everyone who could have been looking for me, I can use my real name and go back to school."

"I'm sorry you had to run because of me."

Nicky touches his arm. "I chose to help you."

It's his turn to smile. "Doesn't mean I'm not sorry."

"That smile looks good on you," she says and leans in close to him; she kisses him hesitantly. She smells like lavender and tastes like coffee, and David slides his arms around her waist. Her mouth is soft and warm. He wonders what this was like when he was Bourne. Bourne, who's been buzzing in his head - sometimes screaming, sometimes mocking - ever since he climbed out of the river, quiets as Nicky's tongue slips between his lips, searching. It's familiar and yet not all at the same time, and he likes the feeling. He strokes his tongue over hers and she moans softly. David holds her tighter. He rubs his thumbs over her back and her sweater prickles against his palms.

"We should make some dinner," she breathes, her words feathering against his cheek, then kisses him once more before getting up off his lap and going into the kitchen.

*

He sleeps through the night for the first time since Marie's death, and wakes up to Nicky standing at the foot of his bed in her pajamas with two mugs of coffee in her hands, looking hesitant. "Hi," she says. David moves over, and then glances at the empty spot beside him. She grins, a little sheepishly, and hands him one of the cups. The other she sets on the table, and then she gets into the bed next to him.

"Are you working today?" he asks.

"Not until three."

"Good."

Nicky raises her eyebrows, looking at him curiously. David takes the coffee away from her and stashes it with his own on the opposite bookshelf. Then he pulls her on top of him. Nicky gazes down at him, her eyes a little wide, her hair falling over her face. She's gone back to blonde, and it suits her. He rubs his thumb over her cheek. "Just so you know, I haven't been this close to anyone since Marie," he says, feeling like he should tell her.

"I haven't been this close to anyone since you," she replies.

"Really?"

She nods. "I-" she starts, and then stops. "Never mind, you probably don't care."

"What, Nicky? Tell me. I want to know."

"At Langley, there was Danny. I'd kind of hoped he and I would get back together, until Berlin. I've stayed away from people since then. Not consciously, you know? But I didn't want something bad to happen to anyone else."

David understands. He vaguely remembers Conklin's assistant, the one who'd been murdered by Abbott. "What happened to him wasn't your fault," he murmurs, sliding his fingers through her hair. She cups his face, leans down to kiss him. He remembers what she said about starting a life from here, instead of looking for a long-ago point that he might never remember, and kisses back. "Nicky," he says when they draw apart, skimming his thumb over the strip of skin that's exposed between the bottom of her t-shirt and the top of her pajama pants.

She stretches against him, close. "Hmm?"

He thinks of the personal ad he'd used to reach her. Maybe they really had known each other for a lifetime. He'd known her in every lifetime he'd had so far. "I think I'm done searching," he says, and as the words pass his lips, he finally feels like he's reached solid ground.

 


End file.
